Fremont County Commissioner Ed Norden: Dealing with trashy properties

How to deal with trash and dilapidated homes on private property in Fremont County and in Cañon City has been in the headlines lately and a topic of discussion for local elected officials.

Residents of the Copper Gulch area have ramped up their complaints about neighbors' junky property and demands for action the past two years. Fact is, I can't remember anytime during my 11 years in office when dealing with code enforcement issues on trashy properties has not been a topic of concern for this Board of Commissioners and previous Boards. Contrary to popular opinion, the Board of Commissioners is indeed concerned about such enforcement and often equally frustrated over the length of time it may take to clean up a piece of property.

The actions taken to force clean up can literally take years as evidenced from at least three specific cases that I monitored closely. First of all, we're dealing with private property rights. And, yes, we fully understand that as next door neighbors you, too, have the right to not have to deal with trash next door. Given the sheer number of properties that could be put under violation the Board of Commissioners was asked years ago to make a choice. Do we want to pursue vigorous enforcement on all these parcels regardless of the legal costs to the taxpayers of clean up? Or would we first prefer a policy seeking voluntary compliance by the property owner to clean up their own property without the heavy hand of government hauling them into court and forcing clean up through a court order?

Two of the three cases I monitored actually did require a court order for cleanup.

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Let me tell you about a piece of mountain property in the Tallahassee area northwest of Cañon City. An out-of-county resident decided to rehab a mountain cabin that was built in the 1970s on a rickety stack of concrete blocks. He proceeded to add on to the structure without a building permit using concrete-filled coffee cans as part of his new foundation. When the county Building Department issued a stop work order, he sold the property to a Pueblo businessman who was ordered to remove the structure. After months of trying to get the new owner to clean up the property voluntarily, the county secured a court order whereby the judge ordered the structure removed. After he failed to meet a court imposed deadline, the owner found himself subject to a $100 daily fine. He never complied as fines and court fees climbed to more than $13,000.

Delinquent taxes sent the parcel to tax sale. The buyer of the tax certificate found himself holding a $13,000 county lien. Three more years passed without a property tax redemption upon which owner No. 3 finally got deed to the property. We then worked with the new owner who cleaned up the property and the county lifted the lien. It took nearly five years to work through all the legal steps before the site was restored to a piece of pristine mountain property. This was a poster child as to why voluntary compliance is preferred as being faster and more economical than court proceedings.

Before changes to Colorado's waste tire management program, Fremont County secured more waste tire recycling grant dollars than any other county in the state through the efforts of Code Enforcement Officer Robert Sapp. We cleaned up significant piles of old tires north of Cañon City and east of Florence.

Sapp also has been instrumental in developing the Helping Hand program to aid property owners in cleaning up their trash. Some of these property owners have no financial means to clean up their property. Others may not be physically able. Through Helping Hand the property is put under code violation. The county offers a dumpster at no charge if the owners clean up the property.

Years ago, the county spent $15,000 cleaning up a single parcel south of Florence. That was an entire year's budget for county financed clean ups. That same money now goes much further on multiple properties by offering Helping Hand dumpsters. Court action remains an option if deadlines are not met.

The last action local government wants to take is sending someone to jail for failure to clean their property. That indeed has taken place by both Fremont County and the City of Cañon City over failure of the property owner to comply with court orders to keep his property clean.

So how much of the taxpayers' money should we spend to clean up private property? This commissioner has serious fiscal concerns over shifting scarce public dollars from much-needed road improvements to cleaning up someone's private property. As I explained at a recent meeting, during the recession, we shifted one-half mill in property tax from the Road and Bridge Fund to the General Fund to keep the county solvent. Although we are using $250,000 from the federal Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) fund for Road and Bridge this year, the mill levy for Road and Bridge remains at 0.85 mill. One of the commissioners' long-term goals is to increase funding for Road and Bridge.

As I told the Copper Gulch residents, I hope we can find a happy medium between voluntary compliance versus court action, which could end up with taxpayers footing the cost of more cleanups. Ideally, folks will begin to take personal pride in their property, keep it clean, and making Fremont County a more appealing place for all of us. Speaking of which, Fremont County and the City of Cañon City will again be offering free trash vouchers for spring cleanup in late March. For those properties in dire need of cleanup, get a free voucher and use it.

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